Gordon Barlow

Living here in this Caribbean island, I marvel at how international the world has become since I grew up in Australia. Back then, a White Australia Policy was endorsed by all the political policies; and a senior politician in Canberra could jokingly say "two Wongs don't make a White". (Check Wikipedia if you don't believe me!)

In my home town - Queensland's second-biggest town - "mixed marriages" were between Catholics and Protestants - "Micks" and "Proddies", just like Northern Ireland. Not any more! My brother married an Indian-Malaysian; a cousin of Linda's married a Samoan, another a Japanese, and another a Greek. My son's past girlfriends have been (in chronological order) Caymanian, English, American, Mexican, French, Norwegian and Polish. His children - all Norwegian - will have the whole world to choose from!

In Cayman, our 70,000 people include 50,000 immigrants from 100 different countries who (collectively) speak 100 different languages. (Many of them speak more than one language; they don't all speak 100 languages. Be reasonable.) What a wonderful variety! What a topic for any gathering round the barbie these days!

Gordon Barlow

It was my son's birthday on Sunday. He's 47, with three Norwegian children whose lives keep him in Norway - at least for the time being. He has never lived a settled life, and never tied himself to a career. Seven years with the Oslo Opera House is far and away the longest he's ever stayed in a job. That's partly my fault. As a house-father in my little family here in Cayman, I put him off the idea of orthodox life.

After boarding school in England (necessary because I was about to be deported for getting on the wrong side of our local politicians), he wasted a couple of years in Australia, then came home to Cayman for a while before before joining a hippy cult in Guatemala and points south. Two of the hippies were a Norwegian girl and her toddler, and... The toddler is now 21, and phones her grandpa (me) on WhatsApp every week. She lives in one of her Dad's (my son's) houses in a forest outside Oslo, when she's not staying with her mother in another forest. He's renting a flat in town at the moment, with his younger daughter. She has her heart set on a life of orthodoxy - bless her; I don't know where on earth that idea came from.

So. That's my contribution to the week's chat around the barbie. Anybody else got something to tell?

Retirednow

Origin was a cracker! Still think Qld will win the series unfortunately

brits1

My friend travelled all over the globe with her father who was in the forces, her parents were British but she was born oversea and do not come back to the Uk until she was 12 then off again she once said that if she did not see her belongings packed in a box every couple of years she use to “fret” now she is a parent and lives in England and has been in the same home for years and she just loves it.

Gordon Barlow

It would have been great to have parents who travelled all around the place; I have always envied children whose parents did that. uk_grenada reports on my "Rest of the World" thread snippets of his very unusual childhood in Iran and Egypt with a father who was in the British diplomatic service. Lucky fellow! My wife and I had to do our own travelling. So did our son - although both parents strongly encouraged him to leave home and "see the world". We didn't specifically suggest he hook up with a young Norwegian hippie and her one-year-old daughter in Guatemala and points south, but he did it anyway. Which is why I now have three Norwegian grandchildren - including the one-year-old, now twenty-one-year-old.

brits1

“The road least trodden” take a journey/holiday and you never know where life will take you ..if you let it. We have visited Sweden,Finland,Denmark but never Norway (my DH has though only at sea courtesy of the Royal Navy but never on land) it will be our next break to the part of the world, we love Scandinavian but have only every visited in the summer our favourite city was Helsinki.

Gordon Barlow

The Norwegian fjords are worth a visit. I spent three months hitching around Scandinavia in 1963, and I fluked a job for three weeks in a farm home for autistic children in Sweden. Norway was my first foreign country besides England. It was a very poor country, back then before they discovered oil; and hitch-hiking was as much hiking as the other. Very little traffic on the roads. Since my son ended up there, I've visited the country quite a bit, but nowhere near the fjords, unfortunately.

brits1

The islands (or archipelagos) around Helsinki and Stockholm are something else on a sunny day they must rival anything the Caribbean has to offer. We wanted to catch a ferry from Newcastle to Bergen but alas that was stopped a while ago so we might do a cruise around the fjords next year. I watched a tv series/drama it was really good about the discovery of Oil in Norway and how the Americans thought it would be theirs but the Norwegians saw sense and had it for themselves and the rest as they say is history.

Gordon Barlow

Well, it's been an interesting eight months or so since I started this thread. My purpose was to suss out why the Australian "Barbie" forum was consistently less popular than Canada's "Maple Leaf". With a fair bit of diligent "nurturing", I've attracted 8000+ hits, with only a years-old cricket thread and a couple of Covid ones ahead of this thread. Not bad, but not up to The Maple Leaf's standard.

On the less-attended "The Rest of the World" forum, my nurturing has attracted nearly 6000 hits (over a longer period) for my "Back in the Day" thread. And a third thread, "Turning Points" in the Maple Leaf, attracted 1200 in just a few weeks. Canada wins handily! It seems that Canada's British expats are indeed a lot more willing to chat than Australia's.

Is there anything in this experiment of mine for the BE mods? Probably not. Their job is to keep the members inside the boundary ropes, not to feed and water them as well. So Canada will keep winning, and Australia's "Barbie" will go back to flagging again. C'est la vie, I guess. I'm letting go now. Occasional posts, yes, but no more nurturing! Thanks for tuning in.

Gordon Barlow

I reported my major "Life's Turning Point" on the Canadian Maple Leaf forum, because Canada is where it happened. Turning points are essential to any story of emigrants, and it's a good topic for this barbecue-based forum. I would like to know where and how my ancestors hit their personal turning points, but they left no records, so I can only wonder.

Agricultural labourers from Herefordshire and Cornwall, for instance. What incidents or hopes decided them to pay for passages on ships to the Australian colonies in the mid-1800s? A police constable and a village blacksmith from two sides of Somerset? A whole family from a bog-village in Tipperary... Well, I can probably guess that they were a convict and his family. I've looked into that but John Hickeys were transported by the dozens, and it's impossible to find mine.

I do know that his granddaughter moved up the social ladder a bit by persuading an English ship's captain to settle down with her in New Zealand and (later) Queensland. What was he doing down there, anyway? My best guess is that he was infected by the travel bug while serving in the Merchant Marine during the Boer War. (He had three brothers who were in the British Army there. One of them stayed in South Africa, but none of the others did.)

All in all, I don't have much to offer on this topic. I hope visitors to this thread will contribute some worthwhile stories. Go for it!

Gordon Barlow

Before I go... Here's an appropriate question to pose while hanging around the barbie: Why does everybody hide behind made-up names, in the BE forums?

I belong to two other expat sites. One insists on real names - although how would they know they're real? The other has a mixture of real names and BE-style fakes. And there is one political/economic site i visit regularly that insists on noms de plume.

I live on an Island where it has always been dangerous to identify oneself when criticising anybody with political connections. Expats (70% of the population) risked and still do risk summary deportation, and local critics risk the deportation of their expat employees. Thirty-four years ago I was marked for deportation, when as Manager of the Chamber of Commerce I was instrumental in seeing off a proposed law to introduce a tax on incomes. I decided I had little to lose by shouting defiance from the rooftops. Might as well be hung for sheep as a lamb, right? i won't go into the gory details, but I managed to cling on, and am still here. And of course I'm expected to use my real name when writing public letters!

That's how I come to use my real name on BE. Ahhh - if it is my real name, eh? Who can tell? Those photos on Google may not be me, and what then??

So, back to my question: why do BE members all adopt fake identities? And, how do they choose their names? I'd really like to know, and I'm not being the least bit critical. My thanks to any and all responders.

RICH

My name is real,,perhaps but it is not smart to have definitive identifying info out on the interwebs. Stalkers/ID theft/ future job /immigration applications, like that. Not to mention annoying spam.

Pollyana

Because when I joined a) I worked for the police and b) my boss didn't know I was planning to emigrate.
Both were major drivers in the need to be anonymous. Using my real name on a publicly available forum would have been a seriously bad idea.

Can't speak for the other areas of BE, but in the Aus forums we have always encouraged people to be anonymous, especially if they were asking about visas. Its well known that Aus Immigration have always browsed this (and maybe other forums) so its best to be cautious.

christmasoompa

I can't understand why on earth anybody would use their real name on a forum personally, I think anybody that does so is mad. And I'm very glad I didn't, given as a mod I've had all sorts of lovely communications. If I used my real name that would make it easy for the nutters to find me and I'd get even more!

Pollyana

I agree. I don't even use my real name on Facebook, and I know if I had been told to register in my real name on this (or any other) forum, I would have kept walking and never registered.


I did get a load of very personal abuse from one person who used to be a member here a few years back - after I had met several local expats, and he knew my real name. The abuse I got as a mod from a few members was more anonymous as they only knew my screen persona, and hence it was much easier to shrug off. One person I do remember though was so desperate to send me abuse that she contacted a migration agent with whom I had chatted on here, and demanded that he tell her my contact details and/or pass on her messages! Fortunately he had more sense and loyalty!!